Angola in the Comics #21: Un Capitaine de Quinze Ans

First, a recap of my earlier entries in Angola in the Comics:

#1: Startling Comics Vol. 5 #2 (1942)
#2: Jungle Comics #29 (1942)
#3: Jungle Comics #150 (1952)
#4: Jungle Comics #151 (1952)
#5: Jungle Comics #153 (1952)
#6: Jungle Comics #6 (1940)
#7: Tarzan (1951)
#8: Batman #283 (1976)
#9: Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death #1 (2016)
#10: Swamp Thing #19 (2001)
#11: Thrilling Comics #1 (1999)
#12: It Really Happened #4 (1944)
#13: Insiders Vol. 1: Chechen Gurrilla (2002)
#14: Njinga Mbandi, Queen of Ndongo and Matamba (2014)
#15: Black Jack (2010)
#16: Startling Comics Vol. 2 #1 (1940)
#17: Startling Comics Vol. 2 #3 (1941)
#18: Marauders #20 (2021)
#19: Alter Ego (2015)
#20: From Slavery to Freedom (1976)

This time I'm looking at a recent 2022 publication: an adaptation of Jules Verne's 1878 novel Un Capitaine de Quinze Ans (published in English as Dick Sand, a Captain at Fifteen). The novel in question was part of Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires series, to which 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and others belonged to.

The adaptation was published by Vent D'Ouest in two volumes; the story was adapted by writer Frederic Brremaud and artist Christophe Picaud. At this stage it's only available in French but there will probably be an English version at some later date.

If you're not familiar with the story, this one is an adventure concerning Dick Sand, a 15-year old serving aboard a whaling ship in the Pacific. When the entire crew is lost during a whale hunt except for Dick (and the ship's Portuguese cook Negoro). Dick assumes command of the ship (there are several passengers, including African-American survivors of a shipwreck) but Dick is... well... a 15-year old captain. Negoro successfully alters the compass to trick Dick into sailing all the way to Angola. Hence why I'm including this adaptation!

The adaptation takes some liberties with Verne's text; Negoro's villainy is made apparent to Dick and the others much earlier as Negoro assaults Dick at one point and steers the ship himself. It is pretty difficult to think that even a novice navigator like Dick could be so easily fooled into sailing all the way across the Atlantic.

The adaptation tries to make Dick a bit more heroic; in the book, most of the heroics belong to Hercule, one of the African-American men - he ends up saving most of the cast in the book's climax not just once but several times. Hercule still plays a pivotal part in saving everyone in the adaptation but Dick is given a bit more agency, spending less time as a prisoner than he did in the original book. He is, after all, the titular protagonist (even though one suspects a better book might be titled: Hercule, a Fighter at Any Age).

It's nice to see one of Verne's lesser-known books given such a lush teatment; Picaud's artwork is very fine, rendering the characters and the environments with vivacity. As one of the few works of classical literature involving Angola, I'm certainly happy to see this adaptation.

9 More Thoughts About X-Men '97

I suppose prior to X-Men '97 it had been some time since I experienced an X-Men story that I enjoyed. With the first season done, it's left me with a few thoughts about the X-Men franchise and what the cartoon does very well.

1. Cyclops: In the comics, Cyclops had a tough time of it after the 1990s. He's the definitive X-Men leader but at times he was sidelined - written out of the book, or exploring his dark side, becoming a terrorist. X-Men '97 demonstrates that he really does work best as a great team leader - a man who has troubles in his personal life but knows how to rally his team, earn people's trust, stop the bad guys and save lives. The series even gave him a few moments to act cool (particularly in the 1st episode, where his use of his optic blasts is especially creative). There's a lot of life in this character - you don't have to bend or break him, just keep him tightly-wound.
2. Wolverine: He's been such an attention hog for so long that it's hard to remember how good he is as an ensemble player. Post 1990s, Wolverine suddenly took over roles on the team that were traditionally held by other characters - suddenly he was a natural leader or the team's conscience. It's not his best fit; X-Men '97 shows him as a bit of an agigtator but overall good team player who understands his allies' strengths and backs them up. It's nice to see him retreat back into this role after 24 years of stories where if he wasn't central to the action he simply wasn't present.
3. Nightcrawler: The early animated programs emphasized Kurt's Catholic faith - which is a significant part of his character, but not what made him a beloved X-Man. With him promoted to a lead character in X-Men '97, I was happy to see his swashbuckling love of adventure come to the fore. The Kurt who loves to laugh, fence and sneak up behind his friends to hug them is really the Kurt fans enjoy spending time with.
4. Bastion: The Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover in which Bastion was the lead villain came out in 1997 so it was certainly appropriate for X-Men '97 to adapt, but it was also considered a nadir in the X-Men franchise. Operation: Zero Tolerance has long been considered a failed storyline by fandom and Bastion an interesting but botched attempt at giving the team a major new opponent. X-Men '97 took advantage of hindsight to give Bastion a stronger storyarc, emphasizing him as not simply an anti-mutant figure but, as a cybernetic being, a contender against mutants' claim to representing the future of humanity. It's easily the most compelling take I've ever seen on Bastion and I expect the comics will scramble to give him an animated-inspired makeover.
5. The X-Men of the 90s: The failure of Operation: Zero Tolerance coincided with Scott Lobdell's exit from the X-Men. He'd been writing for them since the tailend of the Jim Lee era and, whatever you might say about his work, he kept the book consistent, largely by following the storytelling engine Chris Claremont had created. '97 was a particularly hard time for Marvel, with the company's bankruptcy, a number of failed new titles and initiatives and most of their television and film projects either stalled or dead on arrival. That X-Men '97 exists demonstrates how well Marvel repaired itself following the 90s. For all the negatives we can say about how Marvel has conducted itself in the 21st century, at least they pulled out of their death-spiral.
6. X-Men history: Outside of Operation: Zero Tolerance, however, X-Men '97 is very interested in celebrating - not the 1990s - but the 1980s X-Men of Chris Claremont's heyday. The characters of the original animated series were all garbed in the Jim Lee outfits they wore for most of the 1990s, but X-Men '97 gradually shifts most of the cast into costumes from the Claremont days; Rogue and Storm revert to their original Dave Cockrum costumes; Wolverine dons his brown and orange John Byrne costume; Magneto briefly wears his 1980s John Romita Jr. 'M' costume; Sunspot wears a 1980s New Mutants costume (pointedly he doesn't wear the blue and gold costume seen elsewhere in the series); Cyclops goes back to his classic Dave Cockrum look while Jean Grey wears her 1960s Don Heck costume. Claremont's Inferno is covered in a single episode! Claremont and Windsor-Smith's Lifedeath is adapted! But the series also looks ahead past the 1990s with Jubilee donning her circa 2010 costume, the Sentinel attack from E Is for Extinction is adapted and later characters such as Pixie pop up in the backgrounds.
7. Soap opera: I'm now convinced that if you don't want to write soap opera, you really ought to keep away from the X-Men. If you don't want to write at least one romantic triangle, why even bother? The X-Men have a long history of angst but also of romantic pairings - the fandom loves it. And X-Men '97 delves in, with a Cyclops/Jean/Madelyne triangle (that's a bit more nuanced than the original triangle), a Rogue/Magneto/Gambit triangle, the Storm/Forge pairing and a wholly original Jubilee/Sunspot romance. That's prime X-Men.
8. Metaphors: It's been pointed out that although the X-Men can be used as an interesting metaphor for race, religion and sexuality it can be unhelpful to try and make parity between them. Frequently, humans are right to be worried about mutants, given they have immense power, poor self-control and almost no accountability. They also have a tendency to close ranks and assert that only they can judge each other (they also appear to forgive each other very readily). That limits the metaphor, so it's probably best not to hit it too square on the head. I think X-Men '97 balanced it well - it's the first animated X-Men I've seen that was willing to dip its toes into gay/trans characters and certainly the character arc for Sunspot as he asserts his identity as a mutant seems to be intentionally mirroring the experience of someone "coming out." The destruction of Genosha draws from 9/11 to give scenes emotional depth yet not unearned. It's a good mix.
9. Shade: Oh, how I did enjoy X-Men '97 casting shade on the 2000 X-Men movie, as Cyclops quips of the X-Men costume he's just handed Cable: "What'd you expect? Black leather?" The 2000 film took a moment to dump on Wolverine's iconic comic book visuals and the last 24 years have seen many other comics characters adapted to live action in less-than-inspired visuals - often just wearing black leather. Kudos to X-Men '97 for being unashamedly a comic book adaptation.

Radio Recap: Starring Boris Karloff

Starring Boris Karloff was an ABC program that - according to its Wikipedia page - appeared simultaneously on radio and television. It apepars that each performance on the radio was followed the subsequent day with a performance of the same story on television. It appeared from September 21 to December 15, 1949. Apparently during the 2nd month the series changed its title to Mystery Playhouse Starring Boris Karloff.

None of the television performances have turned up; only one episode of the radio version has been unearthed; said program is "the Night Reveals," the final episode. This is an adaptation of the story by Cornell Woolrich and it uses the same script that was heard when that story was adapted on Suspense. It's notable, since the Suspense version took a few liberties with Woolrich's original short story.

Looking at the Wikipedia article, it's interesting to note one of the missing episodes was titled "Mungahara" - which was an Arch Oboler production on Lights Out! So that's at least two episodes that used existing radio scripts, it makes one wonder whether other episodes were adapted from existing stories.

Karloff was a treasure; it's a pity that Starring Boris Karloff wasn't a huge hit. He made regular radio appearances on mystery shows like Lights Out, Creeps by Night and Inner Sanctum Mysteries (plus his terrific quiz show appearances on Information Please) and it's always a pleasure to hear his warm, rich voice. Horror stories were never more heart-warming than when spoken by Karloff.

You can listen to the Starring Boris Karloff production of "the Night Reveals" at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library; they have it filed under the series "Mystery Playhouse."

Radio Recap: Out of the Deep

According to John Dunning, Out of the Deep was an NBC adventure program for only about one month, from December 1, 1945 to January 5, 1946. However, the Radio Goldindex dates two surviving episodes as being from February, 1946, so who knows?

Out of the Deep starred Ted Maxwell as Gunnar Carlyle, captain of the Blue Falcon, a salvage vessel. Each week the Blue Falcon would set out to recover cargo from sunken ships and encounter adventure along the way. Although it seems this was an evening program, the three surviving episodes from 1946 could have easily been released to a juvenile audience, especially with the presence of Gary, a precocious teenager who stows aboard the Blue Falcon and soon becomes indispensable at saving the ship each and every week.

Apparently the series attempted a comeback in 1951: The Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library has an Out of the Deep program dated January 10, 1951. It uses the character of Gunnar Carlyle (now portrayed by Wally Maher) aboard the Blue Falcon but the tone is a bit more grim and mature than the earlier series. It's credited to NBC and in the absence of more information, I'm assuming it's an audition for a new series. It's a pretty good adventure program, more-or-less like an average episode of Escape.

You can hear four episodes of Out of the Deep at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

RIP: Tom Luth

Comic book colorist Tom Luth was found dead at home last Thursday following a heart attack; he was 70 years old.

Tom Luth will be best-remembered among comics fans as being part of the Groo the Wanderer creative team, coloring most Groo stories through that book's history (Groo writer Mark Evanier eulogiezes Luth here and Groo artist Sergio Aragones eulogized him as well). But though I've never cared much for Groo, I am a huge Usagi Yojimbo fan. Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo was usually presented in black and white stories, with the covers supplying the only colour. Luth coloured the cover of Critters #1 in 1986, when the series was just starting out, and continued to colour Sakai's covers from the Fantagraphics era, to Mirage, to Dark Horse and then to IDW. Along the way there were occasional Usagi Yojimbo Color Specials in which the character appeared in full-colour comics. Luth was the interior colorist on every Color Special both at Fantagraphcis and Dark Horse.

The move to publishing at IDW in 2019 resulted in Usagi Yojimbo switching to a full-colour format. From then on, Luth was tapped not only for the covers but the interiors as well. That seemed to be too much for him; in 2020 he announced his retirement from comics. Although Usagi Yojimbo has continued on as a full-colour comic (usually coloured by the studio Hi-Fi Design), 2020's Usagi Yojimbo #14 was Luth's farewell to the series. Luth did terrific work on Usagi Yojimbo for 35 years and left behind an excellent body of work.

Rest in peace, Mr. Luth.

Angola in the Comics #20: From Slavery to Freedom

As I'm on the verge of a new trip to Angola, I think it's time to revisit Angola in the Comics!

From Slavery to Freedom is a comic book that was apparently published by the MPLA prior to Angola's independence. The copy that I've read is available online at the Marxists Internet Archive; it was first published in English in 1976 by a San Francisco communist publisher called the Peoples Press. The English edition credits their translator and letterer (said letterer is the underground comics artist Spain Rodriguez!) but there are no credits offered for the original creators... for that matter, no indication of what the comic's original Portuguese title was or when the MPLA first published it.

From Slavery to Freedom is a political comic - a work of propaganda. It seems it was designed primarily to help the MPLA explain what their cause was doing through a visual narrative to assist the illiterate or semi-literate. The plot concerns a young man named Paulo who is victimized by PIDE (the Portuguese secret police), joins the MPLA and becomes one of their fighters. The story took time to demonstrate that women were part of their movement and that there were white men fighting alongside them against PIDE. It didn't actually put that much time into extolling the virtues of Marxism - the MPLA were presented simply as a pro-Angola force battling the Portuguese, that seemed to be a more important message than any idealogy.

However, the Peoples Press were themselves a lot more explicit in their messaging. They wrote an introduction and epilogue for their version in which they celebrated Angola's independence, extolled the virtues of the MPLA and denounced the MPLA's enemies (FNLA and UNITA) as puppets of the CIA. The Peoples Press had a smug tone that is really off-putting to a non-communist such as myself. Frankly, they could have learned some lessons in propaganda!

I should also mention Spain's lettering. Spain had a problem you see in many translated works - trying to retain the original text within speech balloons that can't quite accommodate it. Portuguese can be a very succinct language compared to English and can convey in a few words what takes several words to get across in English. Consequently, you can see Spain struggling in panels (such as above) where he realized he'd run out of space and had to reduce his font to fit the entire dialogue.

This comic got a bit of write-up in North America thanks to a feature that the Comics Journal ran early on in its history called "Alternating Currents" in which Bill Mantlo examined unusual propaganda comics that weren't normally reviewed by the comics fan press (this was back in the days when someone as mainstream as Bill Mantlo could contribute to TCJ). In TCJ #45 (1979), Mantlo spent 2 pages reviewing From Slavery to Freedom. He primarily recapped the comic's plot but he ultimately spoke approvingly of the comic: "Such propaganda is the only way to counter the CIA-fostered lies spread by capitalist media in this country."

Mantlo hit a nerve; in TCJ #48, reader Gerard F. Einhaus wrote in and complained of Mantlo's "political naivete" and denounced the country's liberation as "being preserved at the point of a gun barrel, made in the Soviet Union and usually held by a Cuban soldier. Maybe you call it liberation, Bill. Looks like tyranny to me." As late as TCJ #95 (1985), Mantlo was still being denounced as Dwight R. Decker wrote in an article:

"The Journal's reviewer of Nazi comics wrote as if he were fighting desperately to keep from vomiting all over his typewriter, but when his attention turned to the Marxist revolutionary comic from Angola, his tone changed to the point that he sounded as if he were writing a hymn for an angelic choir."

Decker's complaint was that Mantlo was too emotionally involved in judging propaganda (I guess we're supposed to be dispassionate in talking about Nazi propaganda?). Decker though, got to be as emotional as he liked; do as I say, not as I do.

Anyway, since the Marxists Internet Archive have put the entire comic online it's available for anyone to see; it's very much a historical artifact as the conflict with Portugal was already in the past at the time the 1976 English translation was made and now even the civil war is 22 years in the past.

More Angola in the Comics next week!

Radio Recap: NBC Presents Short Story

NBC Presents: Short Story was an anthology series that ran from February 21, 1951 to May 30, 1952. As the title suggests, each episode was an adaptation of a short story.

Short stories certainly suit the format of a half-hour radio program better than a novel - novels adapted to that length often resulted in very clipped versions of the original works. However, NBC Presents: Short Story had a different problem: too little material to fit the half-hour.

A good example of this is their adaptation of Shirley Jackson's short story "the Lottery," which had been published only 3 years prior to the adaptation. Jackson's story is brief and I don't think it's suited to a half-hour running time. NBC Presents: Short Story had to expand on Jackson's work and did so in ways that diminish the horror of Jackson's story. The biggest change is that a character is added who doesn't like the lottery and tries to get out of participating but ultimately obeys the will of the majority. Then in the climax, that character wonders wistfully when the lottery might end. It adds an element of hope and commentary upon Jackson's text that distracts from the sudden brutality that ends the original work.

We don't have even half of the episodes of NBC Presents: Short Story in circulation today, but there are some good dramas to be found among them. There's an adaptation of Ray Bradbury "the Rocket" and a faithful adaptation of John Collier's "De Mortuis."

Looking at a list of what we're missing, I'm sure there are a few gems that might still be unearthed one day. Supposedly an adaptation of James M. Cain's "Dead Man" is still existant but it isn't in any online archives I've checked. There's also an adaptation of James Thurber's "You Could Look It Up."

The strangest part of NBC Presents: Short Story is that there's a number of episodes bearing the series' name and introduction that are actually recycled episodes of the Weird Circle. Apparently none of these programs were actually broadcast; perhaps NBC put them together for the Armed Forces or another syndicated service. These include stories like "Frankenstein" and "the Cask of Amontillado" but the Weird Circle played pretty fast and loose with their source material, caveat emptor.

You can hear what remains of NBC Presents: Short Story at the the Internet Archive.